I sit here at the moment in profound distress – my brother is dead. When I was a little boy, he was my hero – more than 5 years older than I, he seemed to be the person who could do anything. As time when on and we both aged, estrangement set in – we could no longer reach each other. Our paths were sundered, partially by choice, partially by happenstance. And so it went, year after year, each of us living our own lives – touching only briefly, and usually in some sort of conflict.

You can never tell when will be the last time you see or speak to someone in this world – remember that! You are promised not even the next minute, let alone the next day. Part from those you know and love as if if will the last time until the life of the world to come. Never part in anger, never part in indifference. Embrace those around you, express your love – forgive all injuries, and beg forgiveness for your errors. You may not get another chance to, in this world.

Don’t get caught by surprise – don’t have a phone call come which tells you that you can no longer say or do anything. That all has been said and all has been done – always say the final thing, “I love you”; “please forgive me”; “I forgive you”. Our Lord said that He comes like a thief in the night, and no truer or more apt words were ever spoken to us – you do not know, so always act as if it is just about to happen. Let all petty angers and jealousies subside – they are unimportant, and you’ll regret them, if you don’t let them go.

Don’t let the day go by – it is your last, and one day it surely will be.

A very interesting story from the AP – it seems that the good people of New Beginnings Church of God have taken to picketing a local strip joint – including asking potential patrons if they really should be going in to a strip club. In response the strippers have taken to picketing the church. The article contains all the usual things you’ll get in such an MSM report: references to “do unto others” and “cast the first stone”; quotes from other Christians who think this congregation has got it wrong; references to alleged good works done by the strippers; congregants being kind to the strippers in turn. Its all there – the whole Church vs World debate in one, little story.

Naturally, I want to put my two cents in.

One thing which struck me right off was the bit about the stripper holding the “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” sign. The poor girl just didn’t realize, I think, what she was holding up. If I were to be seen by someone entering a strip club, I hope very much that someone would try to talk me out of it. I wish that back in my young and greatly insensitive days that someone had – I wish, that is, that I had never been a participant in the degradation of a fellow human being.

The girls, of course, are trying to make money – and it is noted in the article that when the church congregation does its thing, receipts are down. This is because people who want to go to strip clubs want to do so anonymously – because they are ashamed of it and know they should be ashamed. The last thing anyone in the various sex industries wants is for the average patron to be put in the light of publicity – that would kill the whole thing right off. You don’t need to ban pornography – just have the consumers name appear on a website every time he visits a porn website, and that would shut it down in ten seconds.

While one can sympathize with the poor girls for trying to make a living, the fact remains that for those girls who are not just supporting a drug habit, they are allowing themselves to be degraded for a lie. The degradation is being put on display for the pleasure of strange men – the lie is that they can’t make it any other way. In the article is that all too common story – the girl who’s just doing it as a temporary stop gap. Always sounds so reasonable – but any lie usually does, especially at the start.

It is a falsehood that the only way a person can support themselves is by doing something disreputable. Head over to Missionaries of the Poor and see what they have to deal with in real poverty – and then note that no one is ever sent out to sin to find help for these desperately poor people. There is always an honorable way to survive – it is, though, some times more difficult than the dishonorable way, at least at first glance. Always, in the long run, it is proved easier to be honorable.

The traffic in human beings for sexual purposes is as great a stain upon our age as the slave trade was in earlier times. The problem lies in the lack of respect for the dignity of the individual. The strip club owner wants to make a buck – the church congregation wants to help people to salvation. Who is right? The modernist would say that neither or both are right – but that is not the case.

We have a situation where one man wishes to profit off the wrecking of lives (strippers and patrons) while on the other side are a group of people who want the bad thing to stop. Supposedly, to a finely tuned post-Christian moral relativist ear, the Christians are just narrow minded bigots sticking their nose in where its not wanted – but the truth is that the congregation is trying to rescue their brothers and sisters from an evil thing.

The Culture of Life is seeking to end the disproportionate destruction of black life by the abortion industry:

The Life Education and Resource Network (L.E.A.R.N.), in collaboration with The Radiance Foundation, announces the launch of the “Black and Unwanted” public awareness initiative in Bryan/College Station. On the heels of massive national and international media coverage of the “Endangered Species” campaign, this nonpartisan campaign continues to reveal abortion’s destruction in the black community while highlighting the need for more adoptions. TooManyAborted.com is the campaign’s online resource that provides irrefutable federal and state abortion statistics and the largely unknown history of the racism and eugenics of Planned Parenthood. It directly challenges the false rhetoric, with actual facts, by groups like the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) and other abortion advocates…

The fact will always remain that abortion and birth control were first advanced by the eugenics movement – which sought to cleanse America and the world of “undesirable” children, especially black children. They were seen as weaker and a drag upon the “superior” people – the sickness has changed its rhetoric over the years, but the fact remains that black children are vastly over-represented in the abortion statistics, just as the founders of Planned Parenthood wished.

Death is not the answer to the problems of life. We are called upon to endure our trials and use love and mercy to comfort those in difficulty. In so doing we affirm our humanity – to do otherwise is a rejection of all that is decent. There is not and cannot be the slightest justification of any elective abortion – and even now it still astounds me that people allow themselves to be convinced that the answer to a poor girl unsure of what to do is to kill her child.

With life there is hope – and we must grasp at hope and do what is necessary to foster it. We must end this scourge of abortion and by so doing recover the moral balance which will allow us to ameliorate all other ills in our society.

There is much debate these days about what to do with social issues. With liberalism in melt-down mode, many voices are calling for a muting of social issues in our political discourse. It is said that we have to concentrate on economic issues, at any rate, and why bring up those contentious social issues which may allow our liberal friends a new lease on life?

All of such thinking is just so much rot – social conservatism is conservatism; the economic stuff is just icing on the cake. What matters if taxes are low and spending is cut if our society is disintegrating in a riot of immorality? What soldier fights for easy access to pornography and a healthy stock market?

Dave Hartline covers this issue excellently over at The American Catholic in a genuine must-read article. The fact of the matter is that if we give up the fight for basic morality – for basic truth, that is – then we surrender the field to liberalism. Hartline points out that those Catholic dioceses which have fallen in to the liberal swamp on social issues are lacking any spirit – they are dying away, even as they appear on the surface to remain large and powerful. Meanwhile, those areas where orthodoxy reigns are surging in strength and growing by leaps and bounds.

Our arguments about government spending, taxes and national defense will be quiet academic if we surrender the field to liberal morality. We might triumph over the next few election cycles on merely economic grounds, but if we are not also firmly engaged in the defense of morality, we’ll find our economic victories to be fleeting, at best. At the end of the day, we’ll find we have an empty shell of conservatism – something which looks impressive on paper, but which is wasting away for lack of a back bone.

I’ve said before that the most crucial issue we face today is abortion. Second only to abortion is gay marriage. These two fights are for the bedrock of our civilization. If we do not respect life and if we do not defend the traditional family, then we have lost everything, even if we gain 6% in GDP. A nation owned by the Culture of Death and pretending that a gay couple is the same as a straight, married couple with children is a nation which is doomed, no matter what else happens.

The merest glance at Europe’s disintegration and increasingly violent and aggressive Islamization is all we need to convince ourselves that their path must not be ours – but their path will be ours if we follow European conservatism down the path of “me too” on social immorality. Conservatism over there ceased to defend family and traditional morality – concentrating on the allegedly more important bread and butter economic issues. Now Europe can’t even defend itself; whole areas of European cities have become no-go zones of Moslem domination…and while European gays can marry, the majority of children being born in some areas are to Moslem parents.

Man does not live by bread alone – we don’t live by tax rates and GDP growth statistics. In order to live – really live, as men and women – we need a firm foundation of truth in our lives. That is what conservatism arose to defend, and must defend or simply have no point, at all.

Cassy Fiano has an excellent – though depressing – article which discusses the dismay some feminist women have over the fact that their daughters, raised according to feminist ideology, are turning out to be sexually submissive to the wishes of men (in olden days, we would say they were being sluts, but we try to be polite). The feminist mothers are shocked and angered – they really don’t understand how this could happen.

To which all of us who are not feminists – and, more broadly, not liberals – answer: Ummm…they’re just doing what you told them to do. In a world where there is no censorship of what is broadcast on radio and television; in a world where sexual overtones in advertisement to children is pervasive; in a world where kids at ever younger ages are taught the mechanics of the most absurd sexual practices, this is what you’re going to get…kids just having sex without much concern. As is the case of all children rising to adulthood, they are what we made them.

Now, once in to adulthood, things might change – at least some of these poor girls will wake up to what has been done to them and change their lives. But as they go from about 12 to 20, they are really just whatever we tell them to be. If the daughters of feminism are sluts, it is because their mothers and society as a whole instructed them that being a slut is the right thing to do. We taught them that their bodies and their urges were the most important things in their lives – we have enslaved them to their physical bodies and their lusts.

And now, like good little slaves, they put out to their Master whatever is demanded. That some boys and men are taking advantage of this is no surprise – because they, too, have been enslaved. It just works out to the greater advantage (in the very short term sense) for men because it allows them to sample a wide variety of sexual experiences without having to commit to anything. What Hefner dreamed in the 50’s has become a reality today.

If the truth shall set you free (and it shall) then it is, naturally, the lie which will enslave you. A lie was broadcast – starting very early in the 20th century but not really catching on until the late 50’s – that sex was just a thing to do; a physical act of no particular moral importance. This lie was embroidered endlessly – that a healthy person needed a regular dose of sexual activity; that sexual fantasies were mentally healthy; that any sort of sexual release was as licit as any other; that masturbation is not just acceptable, but commendable; etc, etc, etc. The lie has become fastened tightly upon us – to the point, now, where even the barriers against sexual activity for children are being taken down (and I mean children – like 12 year olds, and you can bet that it’ll soon be even younger).

We have to recover the truth – because only by truth can we be freed from slavery. Our bodies are not our most important possession. Sexual activity is not necessary for a healthy, happy life. Sex must be confined only to the bonds of matrimony. Children must not engage in sexual activity – these a host of other truths about sex must be restored, because if we don’t then we will destroy ourselves. A riot of sexuality leads inevitably to social decay – we can already see it around us in divorce rates, illegitimacy rates, rampant pornography, declining birth rates, etc. We keep on this path, and we’ll just die out.

Needless to say, the riot of sexuality will have to fall to the restoration of Judeo-Christian truth about matters sexual. The Christian conception of sex as a sacred union; the concept that women are to be held in awed respect as mothers of children (as opposed to mere conveniences for male sexual appetites); the understanding that love is not best expressed in sexual activity but in faithful devotion. The lie has enslaved us, the truth will set us free – but have we the courage to both see the truth and act upon it? Or has the rot gone so far that we’re now afraid to even fight against slavery?

Time will tell – but I am hopeful, as always.

UPDATE: The over-sexualization of our culture as a by-product of feminism. And, yes, once again the feminists are all shocked and sad about this.

American Papist brings to our attention part of the Prop 8 ruling which goes says:

Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.

It was hard to believe that a judicial ruling in the United States of America could say such a thing. This is the sort of opinion a gay rights activist might assert, but in the context of a judicial ruling, it is a statement of fact. The judge is saying, for sure, that religious beliefs regarding sexual morality harm gay people. This is as stupid as saying that religious injunctions against adultery or lying harm cheaters and con artists.

But that is the nature of the ruling (you can read it all here). It isn’t a ruling on law, it is an assertion that the position of the gay rights movement is the one and only correct opinion, and everyone opposed is wicked. If you go through the ruling, it is clearly asserted that whatever does not go the way gay rights advocates wish is the result of a horrific conspiracy of evil religions. And, furthermore, those who oppose gay rights do so because they want to feel superior to homosexuals.

The judge, Vaughn Walker, has essentially ruled that the religion I practice – a religion I believe was founded by God, Himself, while he lived on earth as a man; and which has been faithfully transmitted since Our Lord ascended in to heaven – is engaged in an illegal conspiracy to deny equal rights. The mere fact that my faith holds that homosexual sex is intrinsically disordered is considered evidence of this – no credence is lent to the possibility that my faith might be right and gay activists might be wrong. It is taken as a given that homosexual sex is morally equal to heterosexual sex and thus any failure to accord homosexuality the same privileges as heterosexuality is wrong.

My religion, in a sense, has been ruled illegal by judge Vaughn Walker.

It is clear to me that one or the other will have to go – and as I’m not about to lay down for this, it is the judge who will have to go. In the nation my grand-father and father fought for, and which I served in my turn, I will not have it that a judge can declare my religious beliefs to be evidence of evil intent. Judge Vaughn Walker must be impeached – he is free to hold to his absurd, gay rights beliefs all he wishes, and I’ll never say that he harms me by the mere fact of holding those beliefs, but he has no business being a judge. While he sits on the bench, no Christian in his jurisdiction can obtain justice, and so he must go.

UPDATE: Matthew Franck says it much better than I do:

Perhaps here, in this nadir of absurdity, we have found the real fundament of the judge’s thinking. Citizens who wish to defend the institution of marriage as they and their families have known it all their lives, and for countless generations, are irrational bigots. Worse still, if they are moved to act because of the union of their faith with their moral opinions, they are crazy religious folk, bent only on harming others whom they merely “dislike” on grounds that cannot possibly be defended before a tribunal of right-thinking people. And those others, the same-sex-couple plaintiffs? They must be rescued from the “harm” to their feelings that results from their exclusion from a historic civil and moral institution that has never hitherto been thought to have been built for them.

They don’t want to debate – the left never does. This is because the left cannot admit that non-left views might have validity. Debate and compromise would lead to a world which is not 100% governed by leftist ideology, and that is unacceptable to the left.

So, they engage in these tactics. In fact, of course, they have always engaged in these tactics. The difference between the past and today is that now we have the New Media to expose these fanatics, and thus generate the opposition which will destroy them.

From Catholic Exchange:

If the average Kenyan knew that their favourite son, Barack Obama, had declared June the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender Pride Month, they would simply not believe it. Nor would they believe that in his proclamation for Fathers’ Day, he’d said that nurturing families comes in many forms, including being raised by two “fathers” – even if neither of them is the true father.

To top it all, Hillary Clinton recently told “LGBT members of the State Department family” that gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay and that her first concern for Africa is how LGBT persons are treated on the continent. “Our regional bureaus are working closely with our embassies on this issue. The Bureau of African Affairs has taken the lead by asking every embassy in Africa to report on the conditions of local LGBT communities. And I’m asking every regional bureau to make this issue a priority. ”

This was greeted with thunderous applause in Foggy Bottom. But I wonder if she would dare to make this announcement in Nairobi…

Thought we were supposed to respect “the other”? Ah, who am I kidding? We know darn well that “multi-culturalism” only applies to kowtowing to foreigners who threaten to behead people. If you’re not a violent Islamist, then your culture and values are something to be ground down by the global left. Anyone want to take bets of whether or not Hillary will say that advancing gay rights is a priority in Saudi Arabia?

The hypocrisy of the left is only matched by its dishonesty. Lecturing us on consumption, they fly first class to swank resorts. Lecturing us on respecting foreigners who refuse to integrate in to our society, they then turn about and demand that foreigners toe the liberal line.

My view: I think I’ll let the Africans work it out for themselves. You know, having a deep and abiding respect for the people of that continent who have suffered so much and yet retained strong families, sustain a rapidly growing Christian culture and remain cheerful in the face of adversity Americans have never seen.

In fact, I see a time when we here in America might learn a bit from the Africans. I look forward to the redemption of a promise made by a Kenyan priest to my parish – that they are so overflowing with seminarians that we will soon have our shortage of religious orders filled by enthusiastic Africans. And maybe a few of them will be able to spare the time to instruct Hillary Clinton in how to respect other cultures.

Found this video linked over at The Distributist Review and it is an excellent, short explanation of what our consumerist culture is all about.

The maker of the video seems to be of leftist ideology, at least to some extent, and so figures that the government should protect us from consumerism. This is a bit like asking a tiger to protect the sheep from the wolf. The only way to kill off consumerism is for a change of heart on the part of the people – a rejection of get-rich-quick; a rejection of mindless celebrities determining our judgments of good and bad; a rejection of borrowing money to pay for un-necessary items.

We’re in the soup not because of some nefarious plot – we’re in it because we eagerly jumped in to it. We wanted everything and we wanted it now – when some stupid ad came on telling us that we “deserve” some grand thing, we said, “yes”. Just as when some grafting politician said we needed welfare, social security, medicare and all manner of “free” government goodies we jumped at it. We need to jump back.

Change can happen, but it has to happen in each of our hearts – a humble begging of forgiveness for our errors, a determination to do better, and we’re half way there. It is up to us – we can choose to decline and die, or we can choose to advance and live. Its really all up to us.

Man up:

The greatest gift a father can give his family is to be a man; and not just any man, but a man after God’s own heart. This is the message that Fr. Larry Richards has been taking to men’s conferences and retreats around the country for a very long time.

His new book, “Be a Man!” goes into great detail on what that means as a challenge to men who live in a culture that is working hard to remove their masculinity.

“Men are created to be protectors, supporters and providers,” Fr. Richards remarked. “We are, by definition, givers. So, the way men relate to God, then, is different from a woman, they are action oriented. I challenge men to give themselves to a higher cause.”…

There is a war against manliness in our modern society. Think about this – in our sublime Declaration of Independence, it is noted that we resisted royal demands with “manly firmness”. Can you imagine the heart ache which would ensue if an American politician in 2010 repeated that phrase? If he were to say, for instance, that we must confront our enemies around the globe with “manly firmness”? There would be an explosion of outrage!

But we do need a bit of that. Being a man does not mean being violent; but it does entail the willingness to use violence, at extreme need. It doesn’t mean being arrogant; but it does mean making an actual decision. It doesn’t mean being top dog but, rather, being top servant – a servant who goes straight to the heart of the problem and does what is right, regardless of consequences.

Think about this – if the men who are the father’s of our rising generation refuse to do the right thing, then how will that generation even know what the right thing is? A great deal of our modern problems stem from the fact that ever increasing numbers of youngsters have not had a man in their life – they might have had someone they knew of as “dad”, but all too often he doesn’t play his role. A recovery of our sanity will require that men recover their masculinity – and we’d best get at it, before it gets too late.

Excellent set of short videos exploding the myth of overpopulation:

The Speaker, via Hot Air:

They ask me all the time, ‘What is your favorite this? What is your favorite that? What is your favorite that?’ And one time, ‘What is your favorite word?’ And I said, ‘My favorite word? That is really easy. My favorite word is the Word, is the Word. And that is everything. It says it all for us. And you know the biblical reference, you know the Gospel reference of the Word.

And that Word is, we have to give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the values of the Word. The Word. Isn’t it a beautiful word when you think of it? It just covers everything. The Word.

Fill it in with anything you want. But, of course, we know it means: ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.’ And that’s the great mystery of our faith. He will come again. He will come again. So, we have to make sure we’re prepared to answer in this life, or otherwise, as to how we have measured up.

Fill it in with anything you want? Nancy Pelosi is no spring chicken. She was, I understand, educated in Catholic schools. While I hold that in a lot of ways Catholic instruction today is superior in explaining the faith, even waaaaay back when little Nancy was sitting in rapt attention in school, you really can’t miss something like this. You don’t fill in the Word with anything you want…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. – John 1:1-5

One wonders just what Nancy Pelosi thinks she’s saying? Or is she just running off words? Half remembered dogmas imparted decades ago; all of which long since cast aside in a greedy and base pursuit of power? The Word is not something, I think, to call to witness for whatever particular enthusiasms you might have – the Word is God.

The darkness shall not over come the Word – but I wonder if the Word can yet overcome the dark places of Nancy Pelosi’s mind? That place where legalized abortion exists even while she calls upon the Saints for aid in passing a narrow, bigoted and partisan agenda?

The Anchoress has it right – just pray for her.

Nothing good can come of the Culture of Death – this is just more proof of that:

Women who refuse requests from their husbands or boyfriends to have abortions are often finding themselves subject to violent attacks that sometimes result in their deaths. That’s the finding of a new report from the Elliot Institute, which calls the problem a “widespread epidemic.”

The new report, Forced Abortion in America, is drawing attention to attacks on pregnant women and girls in order to prevent them from continuing their pregnancies.

It points out a “widespread epidemic of unwanted, coerced and forced abortions taking place in the United States.”

The report notes how research suggests most abortions are likely unwanted or coerced, with one survey of women who had abortions finding that 64 percent said they felt pressured by others to abort.

Death is something never to be sought – it comes to us all, of course, but it is not something we are supposed to court. Our natural inclination is to live – life is good, and God has written that on our hearts. When we choose death, when we go out of our way to inflict it without cause, we have chosen evil. And out of that evil, worse will follow.

The Culture of Life is the only rational position to hold – it is in line with human nature and expresses the truth of our condition. We must end this scourge of abortion in order to regain a rational society.

The fading of the narcissistic and irresponsible “Boomers” is, perhaps, allowing a rise not so much conservative but humane values:

As LifeNews.com reported, the May 3-6 Gallup poll revealed 47 percent of Americans say they are pro-life on abortion versus 45 percent who say they are “pro-choice,” supporting legal abortions.

That included 47 percent of 18-29 year-olds who say they are pro-life, an increase of five percent from the 2008 Gallup figures.

And 45 percent of Americans aged 30-49 said they are pro-life, an increase of three percent from 2008 and an increase of five percent from 2006.

There is much to be distressed about in America’s youth – but with all their problems, they yet provide military personnel the equal to any of our past and rebels as stout as Samuel Adams…and now added to the wonderful mix, an increasing concern for the least among us. God works, as we say, in mysterious ways and it could be that after a couple generations of increasing depravity that we are now faced with a group of young people burnt out on their elders idiocy – they are seeking truth, and we know they shall find what they seek.

There are massive social pathologies in America – a nation which fears that its children may be molested at any moment is not a nation in good moral health. But the seeds of a reborn America are showing up everywhere and I am heartened by what I see and hear.

On display:

The story of this horrible evil deserves righteous anger. It is entirely appropriate to scream and wail. There doesn’t seem to be nearly enough wailing – that may be what is beginning to bother me most. I am enraged by the overriding hush.

The UK Telegraph reported April 28 that in the town of Rossano, Italy, a 22 week-old baby boy was aborted alive, wrapped in a sheet with his umbilical cord still attached and left alone to die. 20 hours later, he was discovered by a priest who went to pray beside his body and noticed that the baby was moving and breathing. Doctors then had the baby taken to a neighboring hospital to be cared for in a neonatal intensive care unit, where he ultimately died, nearly two days after being ripped from his mother’s womb and discarded like trash.

His mother decided to end his life because prenatal scans suggested he was disabled. Suggested. Possibly disabled; declared unworthy to live. He was murdered by heartless animals wearing lab coats, who have medical degrees hung in frames on their office walls. He was handed over to death by the one who was entrusted by God with his care, and he was killed and thrown away by those who take an oath to “first do no harm.”

God have mercy on all of us. This has gone on long enough – human life is not to be discarded as trash.

If you believe that abortion is ok, then you believe this was ok. You are glad such a thing happened, because you believe that human life is, indeed, trash to be discarded.

Do not try to tell my you have compassion in your heart. Do not try to tell me that you care about the helpless and suffering. You agree with legal abortion, then you agree with this.

Make your choice – your real choice. Are you for life, or for death? Are you human, or a beast in human skin?

UPDATE: The “defect”? It was a completely treatable cleft palate.

UPDATE II: If for some reason you are unclear as to what makes a “beast in human skin”, here’s an example.

On Obama’s executive order, some are ok with it, others have issues:

On Friday morning, President Obama granted hospital visitation rights to individuals who are not married or blood related to patients, including homosexual couples. While the Catholic Heath Association supported the move, the Family Research Council expressed concern that the directive “undermines the definition of marriage.”

President Obama’s Friday statement mandated that the Department of Health Human Services prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation. In a memo he noted that across America, “patients are denied the kindness and caring of a loved one at their sides,” be it a widow with no children, members of religious orders or “gay and lesbian Americans who are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives.”

And, in my view, both CHA and Family Research Council are right – it is ok to allow loved ones access to the ill, and this is an effort on the part of Obama to undermine traditional marriage and pander to a constituency which lavished support on his 2008 effort.

My particular gripe is the manner in which it is done – the President ordering people about. This is too much in line with what has gone wrong with our nation and whatever the merits of the action, the President shouldn’t have done it. Allow the people, in their localities, to work this out as they see fit.

Once upon a time wise men would ask, “what is the truth?”. Later, a man rather famously asked, “what is truth?”. These days, many assert “there is no truth”. It seems to me that we have fallen very low in the desire for truth.

A century ago G. K. Chesterton, in his What’s Wrong With the World? noted this problem – our continual desire to hide from truth. To explain it away, some times but much more often our desire to pretend it isn’t even there. One of the things Chesterton wrote about was the fact that the execution of criminals had been moved from the public square to behind prison walls.

There was, in that, none of the acknowledgment that we, the people, are doing certain things. It was all a matter for the police and none of us need sully our hands with it – but, the fact is, that even when we hide our corporate actions away from sight, we are still responsible for them. Today, we’re even worse at it – when we do gingerly decide to kill, we do it in a hospital-like room, and use a needle, rather than a noose.

Not, of course, that executions are the highest action of Man – in fact, as readers know, I’d rather see no executions, at all. But I would like us to be a lot more honest about what we’re doing – and what the effects are.

If we are to kill, then we shouldn’t be shy about it. Don’t send a man to a hospital room – ride him out in a tumbril and hang him in front of city hall. Don’t send a drone to blow an enemy to smithereens – send in troops to kill him, man to man. There would at least be honor in such killings – a clean fight, or at least an acknowledgment that we definitely want a particular person dead, and are taking our responsibility for the death.

Our dishonesty doesn’t stop at such grim things as killing – it extends right through our lives down to the smallest things. There is a conspiracy of falsehood and we all engage in it. All, that is, save a few saints and an even fewer number of hardened sinners who are at least honest about themselves.

The first task in a real reform is to start acknowledging the truth. The second task it to stop worrying about offending liars. People present to us things we know are false and yet out of fear for hurt feelings, we pretend that they didn’t lie to us.

Life can be brutal, but it doesn’t have to be inhuman. It is brutal that some of our brothers and sisters go to bed hungry. It is inhuman, however, that we don’t admit that some of them go to bed hungry because they simply didn’t bestir themselves to take the responsibility of earning their daily bread. It is brutal that some are born in to desperate circumstances. It is inhuman that we then excuse their bad behavior as if they hadn’t the wit to realize that a bad mother and poverty don’t excuse mayhem.

In all of our lies there is this ultimate result – brutality is turned in to inhumanity, and we cap off our lies by turning black in to white and claiming that our inhumanity is the most humane thing to do. We absurdly say that it is more humane to inject chemicals in to a man’s body than to very swiftly and nearly painlessly kill him by hanging him. Its more humane to allow a street person to wallow in filth than to take him up, even against his will, and force him to live in decency.

If we are to make a world suited to men and women – rather than a world of cheaply bought slaves – then we must start being truthful. When something is bad, we must say that it is so. When someone is doing wrong, we must call them wrong-doers (even, and especially, when the wrong-doer is the man in the mirror). Better a thousand sins acknowledged than one excused.

Better, that is, to hear the truth and act upon it than to hide from the truth and act upon lies.

The Culture of Death wants more blood:

A campaign to give elderly people in the Netherlands the right to assisted suicide said Monday it has gathered more than 100,000 signatures, hoping to push the boundaries another notch in the country that first legalized euthanasia.

Remember, this isn’t assisted suicide because you’re terminally ill and in pain, its because you’re old. They are already engaging in widespread euthanasia and infanticide in Holland on the flimsiest of excuses – doing this would make it a free for all (define “old” for me, please). It’ll only take the mildest of court or bureaucratic rulings from that point to assisted suicide for all.

Holland is already below replacement rate in population – except among their Moslems, of course – and this is what the culture of death gets you: an unwillingness to have children coupled with an unwillingness to live, or be bothered with elderly or ill relatives. Childless people without hope committing slow suicide.

This is modern, post-Christian civilization – a pact with death; an unwillingness to live; an example of just why Christianity rose so swiftly in the dying, pagan, Greco-Roman world…they, too, at last became enthralled with death and sterility. With the return of paganism we have the return of despair: there is, then, only one cure for what ails us.

This is what you get:

Church leaders are defending the last remaining Catholic adoption agency in England and Wales against homosexual equality laws that will force it to close. They say children in the agency’s care will suffer, charging that the government is trying to force the agency to disregard Church teaching.

Last Sunday, three bishops said that they were taking the case of the Catholic Care adoption agency to the High Court, the Catholic Herald reports. The agency finds homes for about 20 hard-to-place children each year.

Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, Bishop John Rawsthorne of Hallam and Bishop Terry Drainey of Middlesbrough, said in a letter read at Masses that the government is trying to force the agency to operate “with disregard to the Church’s teaching on marriage and family life.”

Its not that they hate children, but that they love gay activism, more – with the added “benefit” of being able to attack the Catholic Church (always a favorite liberal past time). This is insanity.

No one is arguing that an adoption agency can’t adopt out to gay couples – all that is happening here is that a group which has worked for nearly a century at helping hard-to-place children find homes cannot, in good conscience, place those children in homes which inherently violate the group’s teachings. But that isn’t ok with liberals – no, they have to go all fascist about such things and demand either a surrender of conscience, or a surrender of charity.

Hopefully there is some rationality remaining in Britain – and it is additionally hoped that we’ll never come to this in the United States.

With the Great Sorba Issue, it is now time, I guess, for all of us conservatives to lay out our views not so much on homosexuality as a thing, but on the place homosexuality can have within the conservative movement.

At bottom, the Reagan Condition is correct: if you’re 80% with me, then I’m going keep with the 80%. Of course, homosexuality is a bit different than, say, someone disagreeing with you on the worth of federal funding for the art.

The left embraces homosexual activist groups simply because they view such as yet more acid to pour upon traditional morality. The utter contempt we routinely see of homosexuals, themselves, tells the true story of leftist attitudes. This isn’t about being anti-gay but, rather, about being anti-human. Anyone who can advocate for “abortion rights” is not someone who can then turn around and show genuine respect for people. All is political on the left – as is best demonstrated by the vile hatred which will directed against any homosexual (or black, or woman, or other selected group) who strays from the leftist path.

The right has tended to reject homosexual activists because most conservatives are strongly Christian in outlook. It has been difficult to separate out the person from the act – and doing this separation was not helped by some overt acts by homosexuals (it was a terrible thing – and entirely unjustified under any circumstances whatsoever – when Christians were pelted by condoms as they left Church. It didn’t help matters at all when some gay activists would enter a Catholic Church and desecrate the Blessed Sacrament). But as time has gone on the old poisons have faded – and the growth of conservative homosexual groups and individuals has broken down a lot of barriers.

I don’t think that anyone can say how conservatism and homosexuality should approach each other. It remains difficult to bring the right and homosexual groups together. Accepting individual homosexual conservatives is a lot easier. Treating all people, regardless of status, with love and respect is a requirement. At bottom, it is only a people with strong morals and a clear, Judeo-Christian outlook which can afford homosexuals essential tolerance.

For me, it is a matter of refusing absolutely to hate anyone; an understanding that I have no cause to act high and mighty as regards morality. And a determination, at this moment, that the defense of liberty trumps all.